Down the Rabbit Hole Once More
by KateC24601
Summary: It's been a month since Castle went missing and Kate finds herself falling down the rabbit hole. Based on a prompt from Castle Fanfic Prompts on Tumblr. Angst. Lots and lots of angst. Three-Shot.
1. Kate

Disclaimer: I would say "I wish" but after watching _The Time of Our Lives _last night, I'm really glad that Andrew Marlowe owns Castle. It was amazing.

A/N: Based on a prompt from Castle Fanfic Prompts on tumblr; prompt at bottom. Although, I highly doubt that this is what the prompter had in mind.

* * *

><p>Kate slammed the phone back in its cradle, collapsed back in her chair, and let out a frustrated sigh.<p>

Another dead-end to add to the list.

She sighed again as her hands came up to rub her temples and her eyes slipped shut. She hadn't slept more than 10 minutes in the last 72 hours; she was exhausted.

She looked up at his picture on the murder board and let a few tears leak out. No one was at the precinct this early - except Gates who was tucked away in her office - so no one would see.

She allowed herself a few minutes to get lost in his picture, to get lost in the perfect lines that made up his smiling face.

She was pulled from her thoughts when an arm passed in front of her vision and placed a vibrant yellow Post-it note on her desk. When she looked up, she was met with Gates's stern gaze.

Kate immediately sat up ram-rod straight, "What is this? Is it a lead? Did someone call in?" Her voice was frantic and high pitched and she knew it, but she didn't care.

"No, Detective, it's an address. Of a murder that just took place. You are going to take the lead on it. Detectives Ryan and Esposito have already been contacted, and they will meet you at the scene."

"But, Sir—" she tried to interject, but she was interrupted.

"I appreciate your situation, Detective," Gates voice softened, and she sat down in the chair next to Kate's desk. Castle's chair. Kate cringed, but didn't say anything. "But, Kate, it's been a month; you haven't had a solid lead in weeks. You're a homicide detective, and this isn't what the NYPD is paying you for."

A horrified look crossed Kate's face

"I'm not telling you to stop; I'm just telling you to do this too." Gates placed a surprisingly gentle hand over Kate's before getting up and retreating to her office.

Kate stood and pulled on her coat, her movements stiff and angry. She grabbed the address and stormed to the elevator.

* * *

><p>The case was a tough one; it took way too much of her time and brainpower. It wasn't closed until almost two weeks later.<p>

Kate had spent the nights of those two weeks working Castle's case until very early in the morning then falling asleep at her desk until Ryan or Esposito came to wake her up with a cup of coffee.

It was the same coffee order that Castle always brought her, but the flavor was wrong now: flat and bitter.

"Go home, Kate." She's not sure who said it; she was too tired to care, and for once, she listened.

* * *

><p>She almost fell asleep standing in the elevator on the way up to the loft. Her hands shook as she tried to grab her keys from her coat pocket.<p>

Then she heard a voice from inside the apartment. _His _voice.

She tried to speed up her movements. She _needed_ to be in that apartment, but the faster she moved, the harder her hands shook.

"Castle!" she shrieked, her voice sounded twisted and garbled to her ears.

Her frazzled, sleep-deprived brain decided that all of this was just _too much._

Suddenly, she was numb. She stopped shaking, but she lost her grip on the keys and they fell to her feet.

"Castle!" she called again, her lips and tongue felt thick and fuzzy.

She _needed _get into that apartment. So she stepped back, and with all the power she had left in her, she kicked down the door.

* * *

><p>The apartment was empty; someone had left the TV on, and a news story on him blasted through the apartment. A sound byte from an ancient interview with him from when the first Derick Storm book came out hit her like a pile of bricks.<p>

"No," her whisper was muffled over the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

And then other words were falling out of her mouth. At first it was unintelligible gibberish, but then gibberish became words, and words became sentences. And she recognized the sentences.

"_When I met you, my life became extraordinary_."

Her wedding vows.

"_You taught me to be my best self,"_

Why was she saying her wedding vows?

"_To look forward to tomorrow's adventures."_

Why couldn't she stop?

"_And when I was vulnerable, you were strong."_

She didn't want to hear this, didn't want to listen to it. Why couldn't she stop?

"_I love you, Richard Castle."_

She was choking now, her words coming out of her mouth as strangled gasps.

"_And I want to live my life in the warmth of your smile."_

She was suddenly very hot; her high-collared coat was suffocating. So she ripped it off.

"_And the strength of your embrace."_

It still wasn't enough. So she ripped off her blouse.

"_I promise you, I will love you."_

She still couldn't breathe. Why couldn't she breath? Why wouldn't her mouth stop forming words? Why were words still clawing their way out of her throat and past her lips?

"_I will be your friend and your partner in crime and in life."_

It was her hair. Her tangled, matted hair, that hadn't been bushed or washed in days, was wrapped around her neck.

"_Always."_

She forced her legs to carry her to the kitchen. Her hands blindly searched for something – anything – to free her.

"_The moment I met you, my life became extraordinary..."_

NO! It was starting over. Why was it starting over?

Her fingers wrapped around a sharp knife from the drainer.

Her mouth kept spitting out vows, but she was ignoring them now, focusing on cutting herself free.

YES! She could breathe again! She took a deep, gasping breath and fell to the floor.

Words continued to bubble out of her throat:

"_When I was vulnerable, you were strong."_

"_I promise you, I will love you."_

"_Always"_

And they kept coming: faster and faster.

And she still had the knife in her hand.

And her greasy hair was sticking to her naked shoulders.

And then she was cutting it away.

And breathing harder.

And cutting faster.

And breathing even harder.

And cutting even faster.

And her blood was still rushing in her ears.

And the TV was still playing his voice.

And her vows kept spilling from her mouth.

And faster.

And harder.

And louder.

And then everything went black.

* * *

><p>Prompt: Kate reciting her wedding vows to herself while chopping her hair off  setting up Castle's "murder board," or under any circumstance the author finds the most suitable.


	2. Martha

Martha was trying to text.

It was not going well.

The buttons – that weren't really buttons to begin with – were just too small. Her "I's" kept becoming "O's" and "C's" kept becoming "V's", and this stupid "auto-correct" kept making her say Thanksgiving instead of thank you.

She barely registered the ding of the elevator as it arrived at her floor. Still engrossed with trying to set up a date with Robert from grief counseling, Martha didn't even notice the keys on the floor of the hallway before she was tripping over them.

She tried to catch herself on the door to the apartment - except there was no door: it was on the floor along with the keys. At the last second she was able to catch herself on the doorframe.

Her eyes grew wide and she slipped her phone into her coat pocket as she took in the scene in front of her. She heard the television blaring a story on Richard. "A month and still no answers," said a reporter. Like Martha needed to be told twice: she was living every second of the 'no answers,' every minute of the not knowing, and every day of the same hopeless, gnawing worry about her son.

Then she noticed the clothes. One of Katherine's shoes was lying beside the fallen door with a broken heel, a blazer a few more feet into the apartment, and in the open space between the kitchen island and the living room lay a ripped, white dress shirt.

Suddenly, Martha thought she had a very clear picture of what had happened here, and she was hit with a barrage of emotions. So many that she wasn't quite positive what all of them were, but she was sure of at least one: anger.

She stormed over to the shirt. Martha knew that Katherine was suffering just as much as she herself was, but she could never in a million years have thought that this would drive her to cheat on her soon to be husba—

But wait, that wouldn't explain the broken down door. Her emotions swirled so fast it gave her whiplash. They changed quickly from anger and disappointment, to shame, to fear, and then to worry as she bent over to pick up the shirt in front of her: the collar was speckled with blood.

When she looked up, she saw a foot peaking around the kitchen island. Martha dropped the shirt and ran into the kitchen.

The first things she saw were the blood and the knife; at first it was all she could see.

She rushed to Katherine's side. She was unconscious, had cuts and scrapes all over her neck and shoulders, and resting in her limp hand there was a large chef's knife.

Had she done this to herself?

Upon further inspection, Martha discovered that most of the cuts were superficial except for a couple deep gashes on her shoulders. She also noticed the hair. It was surrounding them. Chopped little strands spread all over the kitchen floor, sticking in the small pools of blood.

For a moment, all she could do was stare. Then, slowly, carefully, in sort of a shock induced haze, she reached into her pocket pulled out that God forsaken phone and dialed 911.

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><p><em>I am so, so sorry for the delay in this chapter. I got really sick and ended up having to get surgery, and, as soon as I got better, I had finals. <em>

_Also, it's a little short; it was originally going to be two parts, but I decided to split this chapter into two. The next chapter will be up within a few days._

_Please review, let me know what I'm doing right AND what I'm doing wrong. Thank You!_


	3. Alexis

Alexis was getting used to receiving garbled texts from her grandmother. She tried to be patient, and she had actually gotten pretty good at deciphering the garbled messages. But this one was stumping her.

'_Katesin annex hell hospitality. Come quit.' _

She took a minute trying to make sense of it before passing her phone to Sara to let her have a go at it.

Alexis and Sara El-Masri had been inseparable since their kidnapping two years ago. They were always there to support each other when one of them started falling down the rabbit hole again. Sara had been especially helpful in the last month so her apartment seemed like the perfect place to hide out when she heard they were going to do a story on her father on the six o'clock news.

"Sorry, Alexis," said Sara with her lilting accent, "I have no idea what it means."

"Me either, but I better go make sure she's alright. I left pretty quickly, and I don't think I turned off the TV. She might have seen the story."

"Are you sure you'll be alright?"

"Yep," said Alexis; she stood and grabbed her purse from the floor by her feet. "Thanks for dinner, and sorry for intruding."

Intrude anytime, Alexis. And text me when you find out what that message was about," she replied and walked with Alexis to the door.

XoXoX

'_Kate's in Lennox Hill hospital. Come quick.'_

It seemed so blatantly obvious to her now, but it hadn't hit her until she found the blood covered kitchen floor.

She had then raced across town to the hospital, paying the cabbie extra to run all the reds, something she had promised herself she would never do. But she needed to know what has happened. All she knew was that the door had been kicked down and there was blood on the floor. Not a ton of blood but not a small amount either.

Alexis had needed to know if Kate was OK, or if she was dying, or if the blood on the floor was even hers.

And now she knew.

It was a panic attack.

A small bout of psychosis brought on by sleep depravation and hunger.

She had apparently not eaten in days.

She had apparently chopped off her hair with a kitchen knife and cut herself in the process.

Now she was knocked out on morphine.

Now she had six stitches in each shoulder.

Now they were moving her to a private room and forcing nutrients down her throat with a tube down her nose.

And now Alexis and Martha sat, and waited, and worried.

But it wasn't long before a nurse in bright yellow scrubs came and told them she could see her.

The hallway they were led down was endlessly, unbearably long.

XoXoX

They sat in hard chairs on either side of the hospital bed, both staring down at the woman in the bed.

In the past Alexis had always thought of Kate as invincible. She had been a super hero, kicking ass and taking names was just a part of her daily routine. The woman lying in front of her now was but a shell of that woman she had looked up to as a teenager.

She knew Kate hadn't been eating well, none of them were, but she didn't know it had gone this far. And under the harsh fluorescent lights and swimming in an over large hospital gown, she looked close to death.

But then, thought Alexis, wasn't she? She could see the end of a row of stitches poking past the collar of her gown. She had taken a knife, _a knife,_ and chopped at her hair, her neck; she had been close to death.

The doctor told them that she was just resting now. And Alexis could see her chest moving in sync with the beeping coming from the heart monitor, but none of that stopped her from wondering _'What if?'_

What if Gram hadn't come home when she did?

What if she had cut higher up on her neck and slashed her carotid?

She knew from her time working in the morgue with Lanie just how quickly she would have died if that had happened.

_If._

Alexis was grateful that it was then that movement from the bed pulled her from that dangerous train of thought.

Kate stirred. She blinked and looked around, very confused.

"Martha?" Her voice came out sounding dry and painful, and she launched into a horrific coughing fit, choking on the feeding tube.

Martha grabbed the glass of water that was sitting on the table by the head of the bed and helped Kate lift it to her lips.

"Martha?" She tried again. Her voice was smoother this time but no less quiet. "What happened?"

Martha looked over at Alexis and they shared a long look. Kate followed Martha's gaze and asked Alexis the same thing, "What happened?"

She was becoming frantic; they could hear it in her voice.

"Katherine, what is the last thing you remember?" Martha asked finally.

Kate thought for a minute. She closed her eyes briefly before they shot open again.

"Castle," she breathed on a whisper.

I was in the hall and Castle, he was in the apartment, I could hear him, where is he?" The beeping of the heart monitor sped up in time with the words that spilled from her mouth.

Martha placed a hand on Kate's arm and waited until she calmed down a little before saying quietly, " Katherine, it was the TV. He was on the news; he's not back."

Kate's shoulders sagged, and she fell back against the bed. A tear tried to escape her eye but she wiped it away before it had a chance.

"But I heard him," she whispered, she sounded like a mixture between a petulant child and an old woman lamenting on her deathbed. She looked so defeated and small. Alexis didn't think she had ever seen Kate Beckett look _small_ before.

Martha spoke up again, "The doctor said you had a panic attack. You cut off your hair with a kitchen knife and managed to get in a few nicks on your neck." She paused. "You have twelve stitches."

One of Kate's hands flew to her shoulders and she hissed when she brushed against a row of stitches. Then her hand made its way to the ends of her choppy hair. Her eyes widened and her face flushed. Her glance flitted between Alexis and Martha before tears started to fall down her face in earnest.

"I'm so sorry." It was barely audible.

Martha stood then and took Kate's hand. She bent over and kissed the top of her head. Alexis looked on awkwardly. She had no idea how to handle this crying woman in front of her.

In all the years that Alexis had known her, Kate had only cried in front of her once: at the site of the car crash that had stolen Richard Castle from them. Other than that moment, Kate Beckett had always been a pillar of strength, of stoicism.

She thought of that now as she looked at this breaking woman and she had to hold back tears herself.

Then, without her permission, Alexis's legs pulled her from her chair and carried her to Kate's bedside where she took hold of Kate's free hand.

Kate looked up at her.

"Alexis, I'm so sor—"

Alexis cut her off, "Don't apologize. There's no need to apologize. For anything."

"But—"

"Alexis is right dear," said Martha, a sad smile stretching across her mouth. "Everyone is entitled to a breakdown every now and then. Especially you. God, especially you. You have been so strong for both of us. But that needs to stop. You need to let us be strong for you too. Let us be there for you so that next time your break down doesn't go this far. So that you don't get hurt."

"Martha—"

"And don't you worry about your hair, I'll take care of it." She smirked at Alexis. "Just ask Alexis here who got gum in her hair the night before her third grade production of Footloose, I cut a mean bob."

Kate smiled at her then looked over at Alexis who let out a chuckle and nodded in agreement.

"If memory serves," Martha continued, "You had straight hair when you met Richard, and it looked lovely on you. It'll look lovely on you again when he comes back to us."

Alexis looked around the room; all three of them were wearing sad smiles on their faces. It was then that Alexis realized that even though they were all falling down their own separate rabbit holes, all three were connected by their love of Richard Castle. He tied them together.

She would be strong for Kate and for Gram. And they would be strong for her. That was how they were going to make it through this.

XoXoX

I am a terrible, horrible, awful person. I am so sorry it took so long to get this chapter up. Thank you to all of those who stuck with me through my first multi chapter. I learned a lot. And hopefully I wontake the same mistakes again.

You guys are awesome, please review!


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